My one and only hockey story.
I attended Clare Drake's hockey "school" when I was about 12 years old. I put "school" in scare quotes not out of disparagement, but because it wasn't really a summer-long program but rather a 3-day seminar.
Drake was the coach of the University of Alberta's Golden Bears, a team that won several Canadian championships for him, and he was (and still is) very well respected in Canadian hockey.
He was also a very nice, avuncular fellow, and at the end of the first day he took me aside and said, look, we're going to have to drop you down to an easier level because you just don't have some basic skills.
He was right. I could skate, but not backwards; I could shoot, but not really; and I could check, though my hundred-pound body bouncing off its intended target was not the impressive display intended.
His junior coaches were terrific. In the next day and a half, they taught me how to stickhandle through the pylons like they were, uh, pylons. How to angle an opponent into the boards and tie him up with my stick.
How to -- O, Glorious Moment! -- pivot on your skates and kick your ass out and that leading foot down and skate backwards. It's the male equivalent of the first Single Axel, I guess.
They couldn't help me with my shot, though. That depends considerably on upper-body strength, of which I didn't have a lot. Basically, there are only three shots in hockey: the slapshot, the wristshot, and the snapshot.
The slapshot is the most dramatic (and feared, for anyone standing in front of the net). That's the one where the shooter swings his arms back past his shoulders like a golfer and leans into the followthrough, driving the puck at 90+ mph with not a lot of accuracy.
Then there is the wristshot, which is nonexistent among 12-year-old boys. It takes a lot of arm and wrist strength to cup the puck and whip it towards the goal. (The backhand shot is a subspecies of this.)
That leaves the snapshot, which was the only weapon in my arsenal. You draw the stick back one or two feet and sharply twist your wrists when you make contact with the puck. Ideally that launches it with some height and menace at the net.
I digress. The highlight of the third and final day was the scrimmage. Blue Team against Red Team. I was on one of them, playing right wing. (Spare me the jokes.)
You are constantly enjoined to get to the net . By which is meant, get in front of the goalie, keep your stick down on the ice, and fight for your spot.
Fine. I got to the net, kept my stick down on the ice, and then got absolutely clobbered by some big farmboy defenceman who obviously hadn't read the rules about me getting to the net.
I went down, my helmet bouncing off the ice. That was the first time in my life that I really saw stars. I got up and he crosschecked me again. That was the second time in my life that I saw stars.
I'd like to portray it as a valiant fight for space in front of the net, but really, I was just trying to get the hell out of there.
Whistle blows. Faceoff. Puck drifts out to me at the top of the circle and I blast my best snapshot at the net, drilling it off aforementioned farmboy's ankle. He was twenty feet away to the side of the net at the time.
Later in the locker room he limped up to me and said, "Geez, I'm not gonna mess with you again." I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't aiming at him.
My Gordie Howe moment.
Thus endeth my one and only hockey story.